4elements, web design and consultancy

In this series, we will cover all the basic to advanced concepts of Magento. It is one of the most powerful and trending PHP open source eCommerce platforms in the market. In this article, we will look at the following topics:

What is Magento?

Requirements of Installation

Downloading Magento

Setting up the Administrator Dashboard

Creating a Client Account

Conclusion

What Is Magento?

Magento is an eCommerce platform that provides
online merchants with various modules that are flexible and that has dynamic
contents that the merchant can change to suite his or her needs depending on the
required features.

In addition, it is an open source technology that has a
powerful online marketing capacity with easy to search tool optimized to suit each business' needs. It is completely scalable and widely used platform because of its stability and its customizable nature.

Requirements

Before one starts installing Magento, there are a set of minimum requirements:

PHP 5.5 or higher

Apache 2.4.9 or higher

MySQL DBMS platform of version 4.1.20 or higher

Make sure you have the administrator rights for the installation of any program

Downloading Magento

There are various ways one can download Magento
depending how you're most comfortable. To make this guide simple, I
will use Bitnami Magento as it has has all of the functionality and basic modules to
start the program.

Further, Bitnami is simple and direct to install since it
has default connection settings on its installation panel. One big advantage of
Bitnami is it comes with its own apache and Mysql services; therefore, there is
no need to install a local server on your computer. In addition, it is free and
open source for any person.

Download the Bitnami Magento from here. This site has various Bitnami Magento setups depending on the operating system you are using. For my case, I will download the one
for Windows.

Installation

Installation involves a number of steps. This
article explains systematically on how one can install Bitnami Magento on
Window. I am using Windows 7 in my case. It is the same case
with Windows 8.

Step 1:

Run the downloaded file to start the program. It will start by setting up the Bitnami Magento stack with a window similar to the one alongside. Just click on Next.

Step 2:

You
will be asked to select components; all are usually selected by default. Just
leave them the way they are. Click Next.

Step 3:

Your
IP address shall be automatically detected. If you are on LAN network, it will
enter the address of your LAN network, but if you're offline, it will simply show you
127.0.0.1 which is a default address for localhost.

Step 4:

You
will now be asked to specify some login credentials so input your name, email
address, user name, and password as shown alongside. Make sure you remember the
user name and the password because you will use them to access the
administrator dashboard.

Step 5:

On the next window you will be asked if you want
to learn more about Bitnami Cloud Hosting. You can uncheck this, because it may
not be important for now then click Next.

The software will start installing
and prompt you to allow access of httpd.exe file, which is the Apache server of
Bitnami. If you uncheck that option, the firewall will be blocking this program. Check all and
click Allow Access.

Step 6:

The next window, you will be prompted if you
want to learn about integration of Bitnami on Facebook. You can uncheck this
since it is not important for now.

Step 7:

At this step, two things will happen:

The
Bitnami Magento stack will pop up

Your default browser will open with the administrator's PC address as shown in the diagram.

Step 8:

This step is only important if you have
installed more than one program that uses the same default port number of 80.

On the Bitnami Magento Stack pop-up manager window, you can configure your Apache and
MySQL configuration by clicking on manage servers tab then click on Apache or
MySQL depending on the one you want to change the port number.

A pop up will
show up that prompts to change the port number. Change the port number then click ok and
click restart on the parent window shown alongside in order to save the
settings and restart the apache with new settings.

We're Done!

We are now done with installation. As shown in the following screenshot:

Setting Up the Administrator Dashboard

Back on the welcome window on your browser shown
above, Read through the welcome instructions and you will get the line “You can access
Magento’s administration panel here”. Click on “here” to open the administration
panel for login as shown below:

Enter the user name and password as you did in Step 4.4

The default IP address that was input during set
up shall be shown depending on the individual’s case. In this case, it is
127.0.0.1. You can now access various administrator set-ups and save like the
one shown alongside:

Setting Up a Client Account

After setting up the administrator account, you
will need to set up a client account so that you can access all the products
and services registered by the administrator. To do this, enter the following
address on your browser.

Enter the address 127.0.0.1/magento/index.php/customer/account/login.
You will see a window similar to the one below:

Click on Create An Account then Login and start enjoying how to use Magento. My
default IP address is the localhost address 127.0.0.1. Change this accordingly to how it is applicable in your case.

Conclusion

Magento
remains one of the best eCommerce platforms for online merchants across the
globe. As you have gone the installation steps above, you have seen how easy it
is to set up and get started with Magento on your machine.

In our upcoming articles, we will cover some basics of the Magento system and we'll then move forward with going up to the advanced level.